On Jan. 11, 2025 at 10 a.m., North Carolina will have a new governor for the first time in eight years — and what an eight years it’s been.

If you want to know whether COVID-19 infections are rising or falling, look to the sewers. Wastewater monitoring (also known as wastewater surveillance or wastewater-based epidemiology) offers a novel way to monitor the health of a population as a whole.

Haywood County hadn’t logged a coronavirus-related death in the better part of a year. But since Dec. 19, 2023, it has seen five.  

A controversial law enforcement association that holds a fringe interpretation of the Constitution and has ties to white nationalism, the sovereign citizen movement, election denial and COVID-19 conspiracy theories will host a meeting in Cherokee County this weekend, but Western North Carolina sheriffs have been largely reluctant to say whether they’ll attend. 

Like a lot of Americans, Lyn Forney remembers exactly what she was doing when the whole world shut down.

Two weeks after it was pulled from the consent agenda to allow more time for research and discussion, a $75,735 grant reimbursing Haywood County for money it had already spent on vaccination services was approved unanimously by Haywood County commissioners despite objections from more than 25 people who spoke out against it for nearly two hours — many of whom peddled vaccine misinformation similar to that heard at the previous meeting.

It may be a new year with a new county commission, but anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists are still offering the same old falsehoods about COVID vaccine.

Our son, Jack, is a senior in high school, which means that we are already well into the “season of lasts.” For us, the hardest one of all is the last marching band season.

A Canton woman has filed a lawsuit against the Hospital Corporation of America in which she claims “egregious acts of medical and corporate negligence” during the birth of her son led to his suffering a permanent hypoxic brain injury that will allegedly leave him to deal with cerebral palsy and “associated delays and disabilities” for the rest of his life.

Last week I was among five friends on an outdoor excursion. It was a lovely early fall day, the river was at a fun level, and the scenery was stunningly beautiful. Everyone was paddling well and negotiating the rapids splendidly. We ate lunch sitting on comfortably arranged boulders on a riverside beach. The day ended on a fun rapid. We hiked our boats out on a short but steep trail. It was a marvelous day with a wonderful group of friends. What’s not to love about that?